Episode 130 · 24 September 2024 · 44:36
Tesco’s Fire and Rehire Fail, Oversharing at Work, PLUS! Can A.I. Help Us Find Purpose? – This Week in Work, 24th September 2024
Tesco’s Fire and Rehire Fail, Oversharing at Work, PLUS! Can A.I. Help Us Find Purpose? – This Week in Work, 24th September 2024
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Intellectual humility in leadership
news roundup#leadership#humility#intellectual-humility
Tesco's fire and rehire fail
news roundup#tesco#fire-and-rehire#employment-law#uk
Can AI help us find purpose at work?
news roundup#ai#purpose#work#technology
Fresh Voices: Anna Papalia and Interviewology
news roundup#interviewing#hiring#fresh-voices#anna-papalia
Workplace Surgery: Oversharing at work
workplace surgery#oversharing#workplace#communication#boundaries
Workplace Surgery: Scaling company culture during rapid growth
workplace surgery#company-culture#scaling#growth#startup
Workplace Surgery: Managing office romances
workplace surgery#office-romance#relationships#workplace-policy
Wrap-up and takeaways
news roundup#summary#takeaways#podcast
Show notes
Tesco's Fire and Rehire Fail, Oversharing at Work, PLUS! Can A.I. Help Us Find Purpose? – This Week in Work, 24th September 2024
This Week in Work — Al Elliott and Leanne Elliott (Chartered Occupational Psychologist) break down Tesco's failed attempt to cut warehouse pay, why intellectual humility beats knowing-it-all leadership, and whether AI could actually help us find more purpose at work. Plus, in Fresh Voices, hiring expert Anna Papalia reveals the shocking stat that 90% of hiring managers have never been trained to interview. And in the Weekly Workplace Surgery: oversharing employees, scaling culture, and office romances.
🔥 Stories Covered
1. Intellectual humility in leadership Leanne explores an article by Tom Loncar in The Psychologist on how leaders can balance decisiveness with intellectual humility. The best leaders don't always have all the right answers — they're great at asking the right questions. It's about psychological flexibility, knowing what you don't know, and building stronger, more confident teams by admitting it.
2. Tesco's legal battle over pay cuts Al covers a major legal win for Tesco employees who fought back against the company's attempt to reduce pay for warehouse workers. Workers and their unions took Tesco to court — and won. A cautionary tale about trying to save a little money by punishing the very people who keep your business running.
3. Can AI help us find purpose at work? Leanne takes a deep dive into a Fortune article about AI's role in the workplace. Could AI free us from mundane tasks and lead us toward more meaningful work? Or does it risk eroding the human connections that give our jobs purpose? Sales is a great example — let AI track website visitors and surface insights, so humans can focus on the relationships.
🎙️ Fresh Voices: Anna Papalia
This week's Fresh Voice is Anna Papalia, CEO of Interviewology — a boutique consulting firm that teaches job seekers and hiring managers how to interview effectively.
Anna reveals a shocking statistic: 90% of hiring managers have never been trained on how to properly interview candidates. No wonder we fall back on gut feeling — which, of course, leads to unconscious (and sometimes conscious) biases.
Anna shares insights on how to eliminate biases and improve decision-making in hiring, with practical tips for both job seekers and recruiters. And yes, Al wants her on the pod.
Watch Anna's LinkedIn video → linkedin.com
💬 Workplace Surgery
Three listener questions, tackled live:
- Oversharing: A marketing agency owner has a talented employee who overshares personal information, making colleagues uncomfortable. Leanne's advice: get to the source of it — oversharing is often a sign someone has no one else to talk to, or feels underappreciated.
- Culture at scale: A tech startup founder who's grown from 15 to 50 employees in 18 months worries about losing the close-knit culture. Leanne's take: very normal feeling — rapid growth is one of the most disruptive things to workplace culture.
- Office romances: A small business owner is concerned about a romantic relationship between two employees on different teams. There are two parts: the legal protection of the business, and figuring out how this very specific relationship is going to work.
(Got a question? Submit it via the connect link below.)
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
Expand full transcript
Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
Leanne ElliottHello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning psychology podcast brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I'm a chartered psychologist.
Al ElliottMy name is Al. I'm a business owner.
Leanne ElliottWe are here to help you simplify the science of work and create amazing workplaces.
Al ElliottWelcome, welcome. As a quick reminder, if you like guest interviews and hearing stories of how organisations big and small have built amazing workplace cultures, then our Thursday episodes are definitely right up your street because we bring you a brand new interview every single Thursday. And if you'd like to keep up to date with the latest news around the workplace, then you're in the right place today. Because every Tuesday we bring you our weekly news roundup, our September segment, which is called Fresh Voices, and of course, our world-famous weekly workplace surgery where I put your questions to the lovely Leanne.
Leanne ElliottAnd as it's Tuesday, then let's kick off with my favourite time of the week, the weekly news roundup. Al, cue that jingle.
Al ElliottConsider it cued. Leanne Elliott, what have you seen this week?
Leanne ElliottWell, this one, Al, is for all the leaders listening. Tell me, dear listener, have you ever felt the weight of needing to have all the answers, especially in those critical moments when your team looks at you for guidance? We've all been in that meeting where somebody looks at you and you go, oh man. It feels like, you know, if you admit you don't know something, the room might start to panic, like your team could lose direction and you'd be left in some kind of chaos. After all, isn't a leader supposed to be the one who knows what to do, the one with all the solutions. But what if that pressure to always have the answer is actually holding your team back? What if admitting, I might be wrong, didn't make you appear weaker but actually strengthened your leadership capability? Well, this idea is explored brilliantly in an article by Tom Loncar in The Psychologist, where he discusses how leaders can balance decisiveness with what he calls intellectual humility to build stronger, more confident teams. So in his article, Tom suggests that the belief that leaders must always be right and in control is outdated— so outdated he calls it zombie leadership— that fear of admitting any uncertainty could create instability. But Tom argues that the opposite is in fact True, leaders who demonstrate intellectual humility or who admit when they might be wrong don't cause chaos. They build stronger, more confident teams because when leaders are open to learning and feedback, their teams feel more empowered to contribute, innovate, and solve problems together. Of course, this doesn't mean that leaders should be indecisive. There are times where you need to take charge, but the real trick is knowing when to step back and let your team's confidence grow. And that's where a term I'm going to throw at you. Psychological flexibility comes into play. So psychological flexibility was originally conceptualized as the target of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, ACT, but its processes have since been applied to effective leadership. Basic premise is that leaders who can flex between being decisive and open, who aren't trapped by their egos, are better equipped to lead in complex environments. And Tom shares a framework to help leaders achieve this psychological flexibility. I'll, I'll share a couple of them with you. First of all, cognitive diffusion sounds fancy. It's actually just about separating yourself from your thoughts. So we can all get a bit defensive when we're challenged. Leaders are no different. But those who practice cognitive diffusion can view feedback as information, not a threat. To their authority. And studies from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy do show that leaders who detach from rigid thinking are more adaptable and open to change, particularly when confronted with conflicting points of view. So that's the moral of the article, really— trying to be more flexible. What can we learn from this as leaders? Well, I guess not to kid ourselves that we have all the answers and that we run our business in echo chambers. We need to get that feedback from our team. We need to encourage that innovation and creativity. And sometimes we We do that by admitting when we're wrong. Al's thoughts?
Al ElliottYeah, totally agree. Some of the best leaders don't always have all the right answers. What they are great at is asking the right questions. And I think this is particularly if you're in something really like AI, I'd imagine would be Sam Altman probably doesn't know every single facet of how his large language model works, but he does know exactly who to go and ask about this particular kind of thing. So it's perfectly okay to say you don't know. In fact, I think it was, I think it was Henry Ford who He was in court and someone, someone accused him of being a fool. And he said, I'm, I may be a fool, but you ask me any question, I know exactly which man to go to to get the answer. Obviously, I vastly butchered what he said. He said it in a much cleverer way than, than I just said. But it's the whole point of saying, rather than having to know everything, just knowing who knows what is, is a brilliant strategy. And letting go of your ego. I mean, that's a difficult thing to do because if you look at any kind of leaders on the TV, particularly politicians who make themselves out to be leaders, they always seem to like pretend they know everything.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottAnd actually, they can't know everything because how can they possibly? So don't follow that. Don't follow the Musks of the world who pretend they know everything. Just follow those people who are a little bit quiet at the back of the room but have a great team behind them.
Leanne ElliottYeah, it's a really interesting article. It dives into intellectual humility, psychological flexibility, and all the different practical ways you can actually build this. Um, you know, as the article stresses, as Tom stresses, it is about that balance of, of being decisive and being open to, um, to suggestions and questions and all the rest of it as well. Really interesting. Another great article from The Psychologist. You're on fire at the moment, BPS. I will leave a link in the show notes. Al, what have you seen this week?
Al ElliottAll right, so I saw an article, um, about Tesco. Now, if you're not from the UK, then Tesco's like a very large supermarket, so they sell everything. They also do things like insurance, phones, all that kind of stuff. I suppose it's like a Walmart, but the way that sort of it works in the UK with the, uh, with the supermarkets is that Walmart, Asda— we call it Asda— Asda, Walmart, they tend to be like almost the bottom of the chain, like all cheap Tesco's almost like a next level up, but it's still cheap, but not quite as cheap as Walmart. They got themselves in a huge amount of trouble this week because they tried to slash workers' pay. Small business owners, listen up. This is a new ruling which could stop you from changing your workers' pay when times get tough, which, depending which side of the fence or the wage packet you're on, is probably going to be a good or a bad thing. Some of these people say this court decision might actually kill jobs and hurt business in the long run, but they're the same kind of people who just want headlines. So anyway, this is the skinny. Yeah. Tesco tried to get rid of extra pay for some of the warehouse workers. The story is that about 17 years ago, these workers got a bonus pay to move to a new location, which makes sense because it was quite far from where their existing, uh, existing place of work was. So they were basically incentivised to move to a new location. Some of them, 17 years down the line, are still eligible for this extra pay, even though it was agreed 17 years ago. Now, there's not much Tesco can do about this because it's all written in contract. So Tesco thought, or the clever, I'm guessing the legal department of Tesco thought, I've got a great idea. Why don't we fire these workers and then rehire them for less money so it doesn't include that extra cash? Seems like a brilliant plan. I think everybody knows.
Leanne ElliottDoes it?
Al ElliottDoes it? I think everybody knows that that didn't work. Workers and their unions fought back and then went to the High Court and won Big top judges told Tesco's they can't change the deal whenever they want. So I'm going to read what Judge Lord Burrows says. Just a little bit of a heads up: he does speak in a flowery way. It is inconceivable that the mutual intention of the parties was that Tesco's will retain a unilateral right to terminate the contracts of employees in order to bring retained pay to an end whenever it suited Tesco's business purposes to do so. In other words, you're very naughty boys and girls. If you make a promise, you should keep it. If you've ever read The Pied Piper of Hamelin, I think that's, that's at the end of it. A promise once made should always be kept. My dad used to read that to me, and he always used to emphasise that. A promise once made, son, should always be kept. Anyway, so there is a workers' union called USDO. They are obviously over the moon about this, calling it a win for all workers. Tesco are trying to downplay it by saying this only affects a very small number of workers. I think that they're trying to do a bit of damage limitation there. The new Labour Party in the UK, I suspect, will have something to say about this. There might be some new laws in saying about this firing and rehiring. I know people have tried to do it before, restaurants particularly. They fire and then rehire on a zero-hours contract where they're not committed to pay anyone, but they're still on the payroll. The big question, I suppose, here is, is this just sneaky, or is it suggesting that there's something perhaps a little bit more Well, I—
Leanne Elliottso, oh gosh, Tesco. You made a right mess of this, didn't you?
Al ElliottYes, they did.
Leanne ElliottI mean, it sounds like— I mean, if it— do you know what's in my mind? Well, it's only a small amount of employees, but you know, every little helps.
Al ElliottOh, nice. That's, that's just in case you don't know, that's Tesco's, Tesco's, um, tagline.
Leanne ElliottYeah. Um, I mean, it's just laughable, isn't it? You want to put people on the spot. You want to punish the people who have been with you for 17 years, loyal performing employees.
Al ElliottAnd want— and were willing to move to a different place to work.
Leanne ElliottYou want to punish them just to save a little bit of money. And I think— and you said it yourself, it's a small amount of people. You should say, oh, there's not many people affected. That makes it— that makes it worse if there's not many people affected, because it should make it financially easier to keep that going. This screams to me, as you say, Al, of, of the chief legal officer, the— or the general counsel, or whatever they call it, and the, the chief financial officer sitting down with data and spreadsheets and going, oh look, we can save a few hundred thousand pounds there if we just actually put them on a, on a regular working contract, and completely overlook the, um, human aspect of it. Well done, Lord Judge Burroughs. Absolutely right. Um, it's laughable. It's absolutely laughable. And this is, this is where having unions is so important, because it It stops this complete unfair treatment from happening. It's a legal agreement that was agreed, has been in place for a very long time. It's short-sighted. It's damaging to the brand. It's damaging to morale. It's damaging to culture, particularly in an environment that is so, or in an industry that's so customer-driven where people have lots of choice. I know I might now think a bit differently about shopping at Tesco and I might go somewhere else. Speaking of which, I saw some really great adverts coming out of Marks Spencer's recently about their kind of sustainable business, circular economy type thing. Um, so yeah, and all the, all the trends as well are showing Gen Z are willing to pay more for quality and for sustainability. So I think it's a poor move in judgment from Tesco, and congratulations to all the workers that have managed to continue being paid that salary. Absolutely right.
Al ElliottExactly. A big misstep, or a big misstep that they probably thought was going to save them, as you say, maybe half a million pounds. And it's probably cost them 10 to 20 times that in terms of bad publicity. So yes, not a good idea. If you are thinking of doing the same thing, probably don't. It's not cool.
Leanne ElliottProbably about it. Don't. Don't.
Al ElliottThere's got to be other ways. Leanne, what else you've seen this week?
Leanne ElliottWell, I mean, we have been hearing quite a lot about AI recently.
Al ElliottOh yeah.
Leanne ElliottHow it's changing industries, maybe boosting productivity, or maybe even replacing jobs. And let's be honest, it is a little bit unsettling. You know, on one hand, AI does promise efficiency, automation, time savings. Not gonna lie, I do use ChatGPT myself when it might come to putting something together called the show notes. But on the other hand, there's a real concern that it could displace jobs, undermine team morale, and even threaten the purpose that we all find in our work. So where does that leave us as leaders? Should we embrace AI fully and risk losing potentially the human connection in the workplace? Or do we resist it and risk being left behind? Well, these are some of the questions that Lorena Yee, senior partner at McKinsey, is answering in her recent article in Forbes that I came across this week. So according to her, rather than being a threat to jobs, AI could be the key to unlocking more meaningful work, but only if we use it in the right way. So the key ideas from the article First of all, AI frees us from mundane tasks. I think you— that's been your argument as well, hasn't it, Al? So as leaders, we know that there's lots of time spent on repetitive tasks, admin work. AI can take care of that, freeing us up for more value-add activities. But the question is, if AI handles the busy work, how do we ensure our teams don't lose that sense of purpose that comes with solving problems and building relationships? Well, Lorena sees this as an opportunity. Instead of focusing on what AI takes away, we should focus on what it gives us back— time. Time that can be used for human connections, skill building, and creativity. She goes on to argue that yes, AI can boost productivity, but it might also disrupt the personal connections that make work meaningful. So for example, roles like sales or customer service rely heavily on relationships, and if we're not careful, AI could replace the human side of those jobs. So leaders need to strike a balance, letting AI handle routine tasks while ensuring teams have time to build and maintain relationships with clients and colleagues. So this was an example I quite liked. So Lorena said, for example, AI might streamline sales processes but then free up reps to strengthen customer relationships, leading to long term results. So basically, the key to using AI is to support, not to replace, human interaction. Al's thoughts?
Al ElliottTotally agree. Sales is a great example. Let AI start tracking people on your website and seeing what, what the buying signals are in the sales environment. Same in accounts. You know, accounts, you don't need to see every single transaction. You just need to know what are big transactions, abnormally big or abnormally small, Um, or might be fraudulent? Those are your 3 questions. So let AI do that. Let them do 90% of the analytic work. So you just move— I always talk about this level— you will move up a level to a slightly higher way of thinking.
Leanne ElliottYeah, I mean, I, I like the, the sentiment, and I think it's a really nice way to look at it. If we're, we're using AI to enhance rather than replace the human side of business, then it, it can only be a good thing. It handles— AI handles the routine tasks. Leaves humans with the meaningful work, meaningful work which drives our purpose and sense fulfillment, job satisfaction, all that lovely creative stuff, and and the relationship building I think is really key as well. Lorena actually ended her article really nicely. She said, "AI, the potential is endless if we use AI thoughtfully and make sure we're directing the time it frees up towards activities that truly make us human. The workplace will be better." Lovely, lovely.
Al ElliottOkay, after this very short break, we'll be back with part 2 of our segment on Fresh Voices and the world-famous Weekly Workplace Surgery where I put your questions to Leanne. Do not go anywhere or I'll come to your office and I'll swap the keys over in your keyboard.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number 1 management podcast— that's us, by the way— and the UK's number 1 marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both And we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode. And 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking. And you're not going to say which. Fel, host of Nudge, UK's number 1 marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s— the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Leanne ElliottThe audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottSeamless. Seamless. Tell us about your latest We've podcast. Well, it's called Truth, Lies and Work. just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioural science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff, and do some big things about how this affects the worlds of politics, business, and brands as well. It is.
Leanne ElliottIt's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to create your own brand, how to your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Al ElliottIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Al ElliottI am. Go and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this.
Leanne ElliottSo come back. I'll cut that out.
Al ElliottKeep that in.
Leanne ElliottWelcome back to our September segment. We are calling it Fresh Voices. That's not true, I'm calling it Fresh Voices. Al insists on calling it New Voices, but here we are. We basically want to showcase the thought leaders that have caught our attention and share their fresh insights on the modern workplace. So this week's fresh voice is Anna Papalia. Excellent name.
Al ElliottLove it, Anna.
Leanne ElliottAnna is the CEO and author of Interviewology.
Al ElliottOh, oh, that— I'm jealous. I want to come up with that word. Oh, love it. Well done, Anna.
Leanne ElliottSo Interviewology is a boutique consulting firm that teaches job seekers and hiring managers how to interview better. Here is a shocking statistic for you, Al. Nearly 90% of hiring managers have never been trained on how to interview properly. Can you imagine the most critical business decision being made simply on gut, whether the interviewer likes the candidate. Forget about actually trying to assess whether they'll do the job well, um, just, just, you know, sentiment at best.
Al ElliottGut feeling. Well, I've got a good feeling about Roger.
Leanne ElliottI mean, of course, it goes without saying this is going to lead to unconscious biases, probably conscious biases as well, and poor decision-making. And this is the message that Anna is getting out there alongside Interviewology's mission to change the way we approach hiring. So Anna shared the short video on LinkedIn with a great tip when interviewing. Most hiring managers don't shut up in the interview process. My name is Anna Popalia. I wrote the book Interviewology: The New Science of Interviewing. I've conducted over 10,000 interviews. Most hiring managers conduct interviews like this: Oh, thanks so much for coming in, really appreciate it. Let me tell you a little bit about me, and let me tell you about the department. And let me tell you about the projects that you work on. And let me tell you about the clients that you might work with. And oh, the team. And let me tell you about our mission and our values. And they don't, they don't ask you any questions about you. And they don't even leave time in the interview for you to ask questions. So all they're really looking for is someone to be agreeable. If it were me, I would not be interested in that type of position. But if all you're looking for is money and a paycheck, then that's all you got to do. But if you're looking for a great opportunity, if you're looking for the right job, not just any job, and you come across a hiring manager who interviews like this, and you're really well prepared, and you go in and this is the type of interview you have, it's disappointing, it's disrespectful, it's a waste of your time, and quite frankly, a waste of theirs. Because they're not really looking for great talent, they're just looking for someone to give orders.
Al ElliottAnna, if you're listening, and I hope you are, I think we should get you on the pod. I think, I think this is really interesting. Fun fact, I wrote a book about 10 years ago called Chatology: The, uh, The Art of Small Talk.
Leanne ElliottYou did?
Al ElliottI did. And I think I even had the, had the domain chatology.com, uh, but I've, I forgot about it and it's all gone now. But that's a shame. But, um, I love anything where it's -ology. I am really, really— I'm a big, big fan of that.
Leanne ElliottLike psychology?
Al ElliottLike, well, no, I, I'm— I like to make up words like dogology, and you go, oh, it's the science of dog behavior. But no, this is, this is absolutely brilliant. I, I really, really like all the points she makes I mean, if you were to take one thing away from it, and maybe, Anna, tell me if I've got this wrong, but you take one thing away from it, it's like, just learn how to listen, mate.
Leanne ElliottYeah. And I think it's really good, actually, as equally good advice for candidates. If you're at an interview and you can barely get a word in edgewise, I mean, happy days. Chances are you smile, nod, and agree with everything the interviewer says. You'll probably get the job. Um, but you want to work in a workplace that cares a bit more than that and is going to engage you a bit more than that. So, I think it's interesting. It's, it's what we call candidate experience. I could harp on all day about how recruitment is a science and probably the most science-based aspect of occupational and organisational psychology, and how actually there's over 100 years of research that shows exactly the recruitment methods you need to use to predict future job performance. But I won't bore you with that because apparently 90% of you just want to go on gut feeling. But if you're interested, I'll leave a couple of links we've chatted about on the show before. And of course, my email is always in the show notes. Get in touch. But yeah, Anna.
Al ElliottThanks, Leanne.
Leanne ElliottFabulous. And the content you're putting out on LinkedIn, beautiful.
Al ElliottAnd another real quick reminder that, yes, all right, we might be going— in terms of the recruitment market, we might be going slightly into the opposite where we were this time last year, where maybe the balance has moved back towards the employer, uh, rather than— this time last year, employees were knocking back jobs and they were in control. Maybe it's skewed slightly towards the employer. These things come in waves, these things come in cycles. If you get it right now, then the next time that the power is in the employee's hands or the potential candidate's hands, you're going to be sorted because you'll know how to listen and you'll listen to everything Anna said.
Leanne ElliottAnd more than that, as a business owner, do you not just want to be exceptional? Do you not want to be the best of the best? You want to be the best amongst your competitors. And being the best is about being the best when business is good and the market is good as much as it is when the market is bad and you're trying to attract talent. If you want to be exceptional, if you want to create amazing workplaces, That's, that's an all-year-round, whatever economic cycle we're in, job. Um, you want to be the best, so be the best, right?
Al ElliottLove that. How you do anything is how you do everything. If you've got an exceptional product, then you must have an exceptional workplace culture, an exceptional candidate experience, an exceptional employer brand. If you're interested in employer brand— I know I keep going on about it— go back about 5 episodes. There was a fabulous, fabulous episode all about that. Link in the show notes. Leah, I think it's my favourite time of the week. I think it's time for the world-famous Weekly Workplace Surgery. Where I put readers' questions to you. Leah, are you ready for question number 1, or do you have questions? Do you have any thoughts before I start?
Leanne ElliottNo. Good. I wonder if we need a jingle for this. Yeah, and I'm thinking either something like, or like, um, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Like, I was thinking more, you know, the music they do when they ask a question.
Al ElliottYeah, right. Okay, well, I will trawl through All of my audio and see if I could find something for this. Uh, I won't. Anyway, so question number 1.
Leanne ElliottCue the jingle.
Al ElliottOh, well, that was a continuity nightmare. Thank you for that. Question number 1. This is about handling an employee who overshares personal information. They say it's quite fun. I run a marketing agency with about 30 employees. One of my team leaders, while talented, has a habit of sharing too much personal information with her colleagues. She often discusses intimate details of her life, including health issues and relationship problems, which makes some team members And myself, it would be as well uncomfortable. I've tried to subtly redirect conversations and even had a casual chat with her about maintaining professional boundaries, but the behaviour persists. It's starting to affect team dynamics, and some employees are actually avoiding working with her. How can I address this issue more firmly without damaging her confidence and our working relationship? Because I really value her skills and I don't want to lose her, but I do need to find a way. to maintain a professional environment. Lee, I've just got a quick PS. I don't know if this is relevant or not, but I said, PS, we have a big client presentation coming up and I'm worried her oversharing might spill into that meeting. You don't want to, you don't want to tell a client you've got the, you've got the runs, do you? Oh yeah, I'm gonna have to sit quietly. Yeah, I've got terrible piles today. Sorry about that. Anyway, Lee, what are your thoughts?
Leanne ElliottYeah, oversharing. Do you know, it's quite common. I've, I've, I've had to manage a number of members of staff who have overshared. And overshared looks, looks different in different scenarios, different workplaces. It can just be talking a lot and monopolizing conversation. It could be, um, sharing a lot of very intimate details about your life. It could also be what we call trauma dropping, where somebody will recall a very traumatic event from, from their past in a very informal, unexpected way. That's a very difficult one to deal with. Yeah, you're right. You've done lots of the right things already, trying to set boundaries, having those chats. The only thing I'd say is that, you know, when we set boundaries, we also need to emphasise and reinforce these boundaries. So, if a boundary has been overstepped again, it's about taking that person again away privately after you've redirected the conversation publicly, take them away privately and say, you know how we talked about boundaries? That example there was probably an example of overstepping a boundary. In that situation, we need to reinforce the boundaries as well as set them. I think the thing that there's two things that come to mind. First of all, you want to get to the root of why this person is oversharing. Typically, people will overshare when they're experiencing high levels of psychological safety, which is very good. We don't want to disrupt that too much. They also share when they're feeling stressed, when they're feeling anxious, when they're maybe having challenges at home in their personal life. It could be workload. There could be a whole host of reasons, but there's. They're not managing to regulate their emotions and, and they're sharing in it in an effective and productive and appropriate way for the workplace. So it's as much about understanding the source of that oversharing. It may be that there is a trauma bomb coming your way, and this is kind of leading up to a more serious disclosure that this person might make. With that in mind, I think it really comes down to having that conversation as a, as a manager. Um, you know, that, that kind of well-being check-in. Is everything okay? I'm noticing you're sharing more about your current health scenario or things at home. How are you doing? How is this impacting you? Is there anything we can do to support you? Signpost, put them in touch with their mental health first aider if you have a mental health first aider. Signpost to other professional services, your EAP program. There's, there's, I'm sure there's lots of resources you already have that you can signpost within the business. Finally, I think the concern here is that this person— concern and opportunity— is that this person is a team leader. On one hand, it's really great that this person is setting an example that talking about things that might be challenging and impacting your work outside of work, it's okay to talk about them and feel safe talking about them in a work environment if it means you can get access to support you might need, and that's gonna support your performance in work. We want that empathy, we want that role modeling in terms of healthy work-life behaviors. Equally, if this isn't being managed to the point where it's now oversharing and it's becoming uncomfortable and starting to impact how that team interacts and, and how they perform, then it is a problem. Some kind of leadership management training could be effective here in terms of, again, setting those boundaries. My manager used to call it hiding the wires. where you'd disclose things that were happening in a professional way to set an example of how you then solve them or manage them or look for ideas from your team of how you could solve it. But what you wouldn't do is come in going, oh my gosh, you won't believe what's happened. They want us to do this, they want us to do that. The stress bragging that we talked about, you know, I'm so stressed, this is, 'cause we know from the research that that transfers, that stress transfers, that negative emotion transfers to the team, and we don't want that either.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottSo, yeah, I mean, a few ideas there, I think, but I think I'd get to the source of it, have that conversation with them, see if they're all right, see what's going on, see if they need signposting or some additional support. Talk to them about, you know, the boundaries, reset those boundaries, reinforce those boundaries over time. And I think finally, some kind of management training might be useful to help them direct these types of behaviours in a more positive and appropriate way. Yeah.
Al ElliottYeah, I totally agree. There was a— there was the first thing I thought of was that they don't have anyone else to share this with. And so therefore, if you're a good manager, you might just say, look, you know, being honest, you probably shouldn't be sharing so much with the team, but by all means, let's sit down on a Friday at 3 o'clock and we'll just have half an hour and you can just talk to me. You just tell me and nothing goes no further. So that's basically what you were saying before. A good manager will recognize that.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottI mean, there is another possibility that, you know, like when, when a child wants attention, then they play up and they're a bit naughty to get attention. It might be something similar to this. Maybe they feel like they're not getting the attention, so they have to find different ways to get the attention. Perhaps they're being overlooked. Um, just, you said, you, you know, like you said, you appreciate them. Perhaps they don't feel quite as special as you think they do.
Leanne ElliottIt might be the latter. Maybe they're, they're feeling a bit underappreciated, but that's equally worth knowing because you said that you do appreciate them and you do really value their work. So, that might be the disconnect. It requires a conversation, and I think then that, that joint, probably joint action plan needs in terms of how we're going to manage this. You know, we'll get you the support that you need. We'll give you an outlet to have these conversations in a more appropriate way. Make sure that you're feeling appreciated and recognized at work, and we'll get you some, some team leadership training. Um, it doesn't have to necessarily be that you have all the solutions. It may be bringing, bringing the employee in could also help with that.
Al ElliottSee, now this is why Leanne is the expert. Don't listen to what I say, do what she says.
Leanne ElliottNot true at all. You always have some really good practical advice. I just, you know, I'm a psychologist, I'm governed by ethics, and—
Al ElliottOf course you are.
Leanne ElliottYou know, I can't, I can't be a dickhead. You can.
Al ElliottBe more like Al, be more of a dick. Okay, question number 2. This is, uh, balancing company culture with rapid growth. I'm the founder of a tech startup that experiencing rapid growth. Well done.
Leanne ElliottCongratulations on your rapid, rapid growth, Techstarter.
Al ElliottWe've gone from 15 to 50 employees, 5-0, in just 18 months. And while I'm— whilst I'm thrilled with our success, I'm struggling to maintain the close-knit, innovative culture we had when we were smaller. If I had a penny for every time someone said that. We've tried to keep our weekly all-hands meeting and monthly social events, but attendance is dropping and I sense a disconnect growing between the original team and newer hires. Very, very common. Our once collaborative atmosphere is giving way to more siloed work, and I'm worried we're losing the spark that made us special. How can I scale our culture along with our headcount? I'm excited about our growth, but I just don't want to become another faceless tech company. Leanne, that's quite an interesting question. I mean, there are some aspects that we've covered before, and in fact, the same question comes up quite often. But I like the end of this. I don't want to become another, just another faceless tech company.
Leanne ElliottWell, like you say, Al, we have asked, we've been asked and answered this question a few times. How do we maintain culture as we grow? I'm going to throw it over to you, my little entrepreneurial business founder. What do you say to somebody who worries about that?
Al ElliottI like that you don't want to become a faceless tech company. I like that you've got a vision. Don't feel like you need to deliver on that vision just yourself. You can get help.
Leanne ElliottYeah, absolutely. Um, a few things to know. Very normal feeling. One of the most disruptive things to workplace culture is change, and change and growth is one of the most disruptive types of change. Um, so yeah, it is, it is, it is. You're feeling and observing the right thing. Your culture will be changing as you grow. The assumption is that that's a bad thing. Culture does need to evolve. You're not gonna— startup culture is a very different beast, and they need to be. To accelerate that growth, to, to get them from startup to scale up successfully. They need to be scrappy, they need to be ambitious, they need to be hardworking, hustle. As time goes on, an organization evolves much like your operational processes evolve, where they need to be a bit more sophisticated, they need to be a bit more stable, they need to be a bit more standardized. And it's the same with culture, really. That's not to say that you need to be a faceless tech company. It just means that you probably are point where— of your growth where you need to reevaluate your culture and what you want your culture to be as a scale-up rather than a startup, there's always, there's always 2 things I'll say. Is one, never make the assumption that you've got a bad culture, because culture is, culture is always changing. Culture is like a living thing. And pretty much from the point you hired your, your, your second employee, when there's now 3 of you, you are no longer in in control of workplace culture because there's relationship behavioral dynamics that are happening independent of you, and that shapes culture. So my, so my thought would be don't assume that it's bad. It might be that you have a lovely culture, it's just not a culture that you set out to build intentionally, or maybe the culture that you need to build your business to its next stage. So take some time to understand the culture that you've got. It might actually be that, that as a founder who is very risk-taking and likes excitement, that actually you're disconnected from the culture rather than your employees being disconnected from the culture. So, take some time to investigate what the current culture is, where you currently are. Then you can kind of go, okay, like a, you know, as-is-to-be type analysis where you'll figure out your values, your behaviours, your organisational structure, your relationships, your manager dynamics, all those things that are then going to feed into actually creating the behaviours that define the culture that you want. And and the culture that the business needs. It might be as well you're getting to 50. The salad working might not be a cultural problem. It could be an operational problem. It could be a manager problem. It could be a collaboration problem. There's so many different, different variables that come into play as you grow. It's not necessarily culture. So the easiest way to figure out if it is, is to start by assessing the culture you currently have. You can use a variety of tools, um, the RX7 method, R Method being one of them. Um, or there's actually a really good culture audit, um, a paper that I've used a couple of times before actually with clients. I'll leave a link in, in the show notes, um, if you want to have a little read of that, if you want to do some DIY stuff. But if you're at 50 people, now is probably the time to think about bringing in a consultant, whether it be an occupational psychologist, a business psychologist, an HR practitioner, um, or indeed a culture expert. So yeah, that's my thoughts, Al.
Al ElliottI would just add one last thing as, um, kind of a Nerd, I would love to be a founder of a tech startup. I think I might be too old now. But but as a fellow nerd to another nerd, with when you look at the tech that you've built, I'm sure that you look at the code and you're like, oh, there's so many things we could do better about this. But your customers don't care because it just does what it's supposed to do. So you could spend all your time just cutting down your tech debt. You could rebuild certain features by making them making the code even. even better and possibly like a tiny bit faster and cleaner, but your customers won't notice. It's kind of the same with your culture, I think, because you can see behind the scenes of your culture. Then it might be you can see all the problems as like a nerd, as like a geek. You can see all the problems, but actually your staff, your employees, your team don't care because like Leanne said, this is the culture. And it might be that you are disconnected, not they are disconnected. So be a good marketing person. And go and talk to your customers, in this case your employees, and say, are you happy with the culture? And if they all go, yeah, I like it, don't mess about. Just put it to one side. You don't need to fix everything. Okay, question number 3, Leanne. This question is about navigating office romances.
Leanne ElliottOoh.
Al ElliottWhoa. And political conflicts of interest. Okay, so this person writes, I own a small firm with about 40 employees. Recently, I've become aware of a romantic relationship Between one of our account managers and a member of our creative team. This is Mad Men all over again. Whilst we don't have a strict policy against office relationships, I'm concerned about potential conflicts of interest and team dynamics. So far, their work hasn't been affected, but I've noticed some tension in team meetings when their projects overlap. I wonder what kind of tension that is. I mean, it's footsie under the table, or they've had a little tiff. I'm also worried about perceptions of favouritism, of the potential fallout if the relationship ends badly. I want to be proactive, but I'm not sure how to approach this delicate situation. Should I speak to them directly, create a new company policy, or just wait and see how things develop? I don't want to create any unnecessary drama or lose these valuable employees. We are about to start a big project where they would normally work close together, and I'm not sure that I should maybe assign them a different team. Leanne, I feel like there's a lot of questions there. What do you want to tackle first?
Leanne ElliottI think that this is Is any business leader out there listening? This is probably going to happen in your business if it's not already happening. So something daft like some recent data found like 60% of people had a workplace relationship at some point. So it's quite—it's really common. We met at work, kind of volunteering, but still in a work type environment. So yeah, very common. I understand you don't want to kind of over. Formalize these things when you, you know, you're a small company. But ultimately, you probably have to because it is going to get complicated whether things work out or whether they don't. I think the thing, first of all, is to probably have a conversation with the 2 people that are in a relationship. Say that— I mean, first of all, check that everything's okay individually, that it's a consensual relationship. But then really just kind of say, you know, how How do we see this impacting work? What boundaries do you think you can set to make sure your personal relationship doesn't creep into your professional relationship or impact it, or indeed your professional relationship with other people? There is going to be something here about favoritism potentially, especially— I mean, you said they're in different, different functions, but whether there's a hierarchy here is going to make it more tricky as well. There's also the chance that if there's some interrelationship problems amongst the team with one of these individuals, they might then not disclose that to their other partner. And it creates this very complicated human behavioral melting pot unless we actually go, yeah, we're going to probably have to talk about this. And I think a simple policy is usually a pretty good way to go. I mean, first of all, define what it is to have a personal relationship. Let's be honest, there may be some casual personal relationships happening between people at work that they don't want to disclose. If it becomes more serious, then maybe that's when you'd suggest that people do disclose it, deciding if there is some kind of breach in this policy, what the consequences are. Some organisations, big organisations, I think Amazon might be one of them actually, have pretty strict— they call them love contracts, don't they, in America? Love contracts as to what happens, particularly between, um, um, managers and, and, um, subordinates. So yeah, it's deciding what, what's going to happen if there is a breach, how to also deal with any kind of unwanted personal contact. I think there's— again, I can't remember who it is— there's another tech company that I think you're allowed to ask a colleague out once, and if they say no, even because they're busy, you can never ask again. Otherwise, that's That's like a behavioral disciplinary matter because it could be seen as harassment. And as an employer, there's nothing you can legally do to stop personal relationships in the workplace, but you do have an obligation to prevent any kind of harassment in the workplace. So, that's a way to look at it as well, by having a relationship policy in place. Yeah. Do you know what? This is very much steeped in HR. What I can tell you from a psychologist's point of view is that any Any change and shift in a traditional professional relationship, blurring those lines with personal, are going to bring in added complications, added emotions, added challenges when things change. So definitely needs to be thought about. My advice would be go and seek out an HR policymaker to help you set this, coach you through, you know, how it can— the policy can reflect what you want, how that feeds into your culture. Have a little Google, look at CIPD, for example. It sounds like a policy is needed overall because this is probably going to continue to happen, and then probably a conversation, uh, with the, um, the people that are currently in a relationship. I don't know, you could also ask them if they want to help you build out that policy, make sure that it is fair, as a little, a little case study. It depends what your relationship is like with them and, and how open that they would be, but that could be interesting. But again, I'd consult an HR professional on this one. This is very much steeped in equality discrimination law. So, you probably want somebody who's really, really up on employment law to help you with this.
Al ElliottYeah, great advice. I think there's 2 parts to this, Leanne said. There's basically the legal protection of the business side of it to make sure that nothing's going to happen that's going to come back on the business or come back on you. And then there's the how do we manage this. I'd be tempted to— and I don't know whether this is the right thing, so we'll find out in a second when Leanne corrects me— but I'd be tempted to sit down with both of them and say, look, if this, if this relationship did end, how would you like me to react in situation A, B, and C? And then if, you know, if they've told you how to react, then you just do that. And then, like, you know, it almost seems like a fair way to do it. That also sounds like it could backfire. So maybe not do that. Maybe just go and get that, go and get that expert in and have a chat with But I think you're right, Al, because having a conversation, absolutely, to begin with, isn't it?
Leanne ElliottAnd figuring out how this very specific relationship is going to work. But then it's kind of deciding at this point how that's going to work in the future for anybody else that has a relationship, or indeed anyone else that already has a personal relationship that you don't know about, that they haven't disclosed it yet. So yeah, it's an interesting one. It's a really interesting one, but one that's going to continue to come up. So yeah, I think I think a good HR expert on this one would be worth chatting to.
Al ElliottSo, there you have it. That is this week's world-famous weekly workplace surgery. If you've got a question, you know how to get in touch. Check the show notes. There'll be an email address in there. Just send it over, and I will put those questions to Leanne next week or week after.
Leanne ElliottAnd a reminder, if you like to hear stories of how organisations big and small have built amazing workplace cultures, then our Thursday episodes are definitely right up your street.
Al ElliottAnd if you like to keep up with the latest news and love a good Agony Aunt segment, And you like today's episode, then tune in next Tuesday where we're going to bring you more of our weekly news roundup, a brand new October segment which we're calling Hot Takes, Leanne's idea. I absolutely love this.
Leanne ElliottOh, and I've got such a good first hot take for you.
Al ElliottYou do, you do. And of course, the world-famous Weekly Workplace Surgery where I put your questions to Leanne. I've said that already. Leanne, anything else to add before we say goodbye?
Leanne ElliottIf you're at this point, thank you for continuing to listen. I'm not sure why you are, but welcome. And goodbye. Thank you so much. Do hit subscribe, follow whatever platform you're on. It really does help, uh, us to bring you more content and others to find the show. If you want to leave a review as well, that would be wonderful. We will see you on Thursday.
Al ElliottBye-bye. Bye-bye. Love you.
Leanne ElliottYeah, it's a really interesting article, Intellectual Humility No.
Al ElliottIntellectual humidity.
Leanne ElliottHumidity.
Al ElliottSweaty brain.
Leanne ElliottCould create instability. But Tom—
Al ElliottDon't do that again from the zombie.
Leanne ElliottSorry. But those who practice cognitive diffusion can view— but those who practice— but those who practice—
Al ElliottBecause they try to slash workers' pays.
Leanne ElliottPays?
Al ElliottPays. Obtain a unilateral light right to terminate. This is— he's not the most verbose, is he? Do that again because that sounded a bit creepy.
Leanne ElliottCreepy Al, that's what they used to call you. Still do.
Al ElliottBehind my back this time though. For the world-famous work— weekly workplace surgery where I put my questions— it's not my questions. This week's world-famous—